Rafa Flores, Chief Product and Growth Officer of Treasure AI, joins the podcast to talk about his career path from engineering recruiter to “boomerang” leader returning after six years away, and Treasure Data’s rebrand to Treasure AI. Flores says the shift is an evolution based on the company’s machine-learning and predictive heritage, its technical DNA of using AI internally, and a desire to create a lifestyle-like community brand.
He explains Treasure AI Studio, which orchestrates CDP and activation in plain English across web and mobile, enabling faster troubleshooting, campaign deployment, and real-time insights. Flores argues first-party data remains a “goldmine” but must be activated incrementally with governed access; how AI helps answer questions quickly but requires guardrails, discusses fear and overemphasis on speed/cost versus value and predicts growth of “digital workers”.
- Marketing B2B Technology on Apple Podcasts
- Marketing B2B Technology on Spotify
- Marketing B2B Technology on napierb2b.com
About Treasure AI
Treasure AI is the agentic experience platform helping the world’s most loved brands finally activate the customer data they already have. Founded in 2011 and backed by SoftBank, the company spent 15 years quietly building the infrastructure behind some of the most recognizable names in retail, automotive, CPG, and financial services — before rebranding in 2026 to reflect what it had always been building toward. Named a Forrester Wave Leader for B2C CDPs, Treasure AI unifies fragmented first-party data into a single living customer profile and puts AI to work on it in real time, on behalf of human marketers who set the strategy and make the calls. The result for brands like Nestlé, AB InBev, Stellantis, and Condé Nast is measurable: millions in recovered media spend, significant revenue generated, and marketing teams that finally get to go home on time.
About Rafa Flores
Rafa Flores is the Chief Product and Growth Officer at Treasure AI, where he leads product strategy and growth with a simple conviction: the best technology gives people their time back. A builder by nature and a father of four, Rafa has always believed that progress is personal — that the products worth building are the ones that free someone up to be more present, more creative, and more human. That belief drives everything from how he runs his teams to the unconventional call he made to give away free access to a platform traditionally reserved for Fortune 500 companies, a bet that raised eyebrows and is already showing results. He brings that same bias toward progress to every stage he walks onto.
Time Stamps
00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
00:39 Rafa’s Career Journey
01:53 Returning to Treasure Data
03:25 Move at Speed of Now
04:12 Rebrand to Treasure AI
07:22 Lifestyle Brand in B2B
09:57 AI Studio Use Cases
12:37 First Party Data Goldmine
16:29 AI Hype and Real Value
18:38 Digital Workers Ahead
20:31 SaaS Future and Guardrails
23:59 PLG Try Now Campaign
26:02 Advice and Wrap Up
Quotes
“It’s not just about how much time AI can save you, it’s also about how much revenue it can drive for the business.” Rafa Flores, CPO at Treasure AI.
“Digital workers are about better supporting the human in the loop.” Rafa Flores, CPO at Treasure AI.
“The biggest mistake is everyone wants to rush to deploy AI.” Rafa Flores, CPO at Treasure AI.
Follow Rafa:
Rafa Flores on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ref2019/
Rafa Flores on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbestechcouncil/people/rafaelflores/
Treasure AI website: https://www.treasure.ai/
Treasure AI YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TreasureData
Follow Mike:
Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/
Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/
Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our podcast for more discussions about the latest in Marketing B2B Tech and connect with us on social media to stay updated on upcoming episodes. We’d also appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your favourite podcast platform.
Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast – The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547
Transcript: Interview with Rafa Flores at Treasure AI
Speakers: Mike Maynard, Rafa Flores
Mike: Welcome to Marketing B2B Technology, the podcast from Napier. Today I’m talking to Rafa Flores. Rafa is the Chief Product and Growth Officer at Treasure Data. Welcome to the podcast, Rafa.
Rafa: Thank you for having me, Mike. I’m excited to be here. I think it’s gonna be a good conversation
Mike: I, certainly hope so. I’m looking forward to it. Thank you so much for, for joining us as a guest. You’ve got a really interesting career. We always ask people to give a background to their career to start off with. and you’ve worked for Treasure Data twice. So do you want to tell us a little bit about your career and why you, left Treasure Data and then decided to come back?
Rafa:Yeah, no, it’s a, it’s a very good question
Rafa:and I, I do wanna take it a little bit of a step further and start about just the start of my career. I came out of school with business and engineering degrees, and at the time I, I, I decided I was gonna be an engineer. However, I didn’t know how to get a good job, right?
Everybody was competing for jobs, and so I said, “Hey, you know what? I’m actually gonna go and become an engineering recruiter.” people thought I was crazy at the time, Mike. They said, “Hey, what are you doing? You’re leaving a lot of money at the table.” And maybe I was, maybe I still am. but I wanted to work with the top hiring managers.
I wanted to get a sense of what it was like to work at these companies, what it was like to work for them, right? What I needed to have on a resume to get through the initial screening. And so I did that, right? That’s the path I took. I set three months of a hard stop that I said no more than three months, otherwise I’m gonna be stuck on the people side of the aisle forever. And I did that. I quit on month three. I said, “No more.” I got one hire, so I was a, a pretty bad recruiter. But it set me up for, for the rest of my career, and I’m, I’m very happy and glad that I did that. of Teradata being a moo-boomerang, I am a boomerang. I never thought that I would be a boomerang, but here I am.
I was with the company for a little over six years. He-helped build the company, right? Uh, so it’s very dear to my heart. And at the time when I left,, I I took on a different job, and I, I never thought I would come back. But thing led to another, from one dinner to a Thanksgiving text to here I’ve been in the seat for a little bit, north of one year.
it’s been a fascinating year. the speed of innovation that we’ve become, it’s, it’s fantastic, and I like to think we’re ahead in terms of market dynamics. So I, I, I am proud and happy to come back, and I have a fantastic team that I work very closely with on a day-to-day, so
Mike: That’s so positive. I, you know, I love the way that you’re prepared to admit that maybe it’s the right time to go back somewhere even though you weren’t naturally a boomerang. I’m interested whether the Rafa who’s a recruiter would have recommended a company to take someone back like that
Rafa: I would’ve said, “Don’t take this guy back.” No, you know, it’s… W- when I had the conversation with, with our current CEO, Kosuke Yota, he… I, I said to him, “Why do you want me back,” right? He said, “I need somebody who can just focus on executing and getting the job done, who has a vision And, can get it done. You’re a doer. I know you could do it,” right? And we’ve done it, right? I, I think it was the right decision. It was the right decision for me to join. I don’t know if he feels that it was the right decision to rehire me, but was definitely the right decision for me to join. I brought in a lot of, peers who, you know, worked with me in the past and they’re part of my teams now.
And we’ve really just… we have this new motto for the year. It’s our annual theme, move at the speed of now, right? With everything going on in the market, do we move the speed of now, but how do we give a meaning to the term now, right? The sense of community. What does now mean to you?
Is it now in this second? Is it now in where you are in your life, your context? And, in the context we’re in, I think coming back has allowed me to just give people a little bit of hope that, hey, we’re gonna be just fine. AI is here to stay, but how do we actually make the best of it and, help our customers be superhumans or users, but also ourselves, right? My job as a leader is to make sure that people can get their next best job after this job, not currently, right? I’m a firm believer in that. And so, that’s what I’m here to do, Mike. That’s what I came back for, for the job
Mike: is more now than AI. and obviously Treasure Data is now positioned, you know, very much as an AI tool rather than just a customer data platform. So tell us, you know, why do you do that, and what did that require in terms of strategy?
Rafa:Yeah, no it was a hard bet, I can tell you that. It was a lot of closed-door meetings, a lot of punching on walls and things just to make sure we made the right decision. But as of April 20th, we became Treasure AI, so we, rebranded the company. We’re still in the middle of it, right? There’s a lot of, very cool and exciting things that I cannot announce yet, but you’ll see a lot of PR in the next couple weeks. But it’s a different company now. In terms of the why, I think there’s two big pieces to it. AI is here to stay. I’m a firm believer in that. I don’t think it’s going away. I was a part of the Internet of Things with Arm Holdings, and to me that was different, right? There was no credible use cases with that. there’s a lot of credibility in terms of how much it can actually save you time, but also how much it can actually drive revenue for the business, right? And so it’s not going away. So when it comes to moving at the speed of now in, in AI, we can actually go and have, a position as a company where AI is not just generative AI, but it’s a combination of machine learning gen AI, is our definition of true AI. And so when we look at our company, we’re trying to make the choice of do we pivot to become this Treasure AI? It’s not really a pivot. It’s more of a step in the journey. We’ve been a machine learning company. We’ve done predictive. We’ve offered next best product. We offer next best action. The models are there. We’re bringing in new models in, right? And that’s our definition of AI. So that’s the first element of it. We saw it as an evolution, we didn’t see it as a pivot, which I think that’s the best way to do it. If it had been a pivot, I don’t think that’s the right decision, right? And I think unfortunately, a lot of companies right now are pivoting to rush to bring AI in, and those companies are probably gonna be going under i-in the foreseeable future. the second element as to why we made the choice is we have a very technical DNA as an organization. We’re adopting AI in-house. want to be a company or a business that can actually go and drink their own champagne. So when we put AI in the name, are we agentic by design ourselves? And the answer is yes, right?
All the way from our accounting officer, to our marketers, to, to our product managers, right? To UX designers now prototyping and pushing PRs, right? Pull requests. It’s fascinating to see that. And so if you bring the element of it’s been an evolution of our definition of AI, not just the market noise, who we are as the DNA of a company, that’s Treasure AI, right?
And that’s why, to me, it was the right decision. I think the, third piece that I will add too is when I land in, and I gotta tell you this story ’cause it’s, it’s always– I’m sure everybody goes through this, but when I land at San Francisco Airport to go to our headquarters, I live down south of Los Angeles, I see about 1,000 billboards on my drive in an Uber between the airport and headquarters, and they all talk about AI, right?
And AI this, and AI superhuman, take your jobs away, don’t fear AI. There’s a difference between what everyone is doing and what I wanna do. From a brand perspective, I wanna become a lifestyle brand, and it’s hard t- to do that, right? We’re not Nike We’re not shoes. We’re not– We don’t sponsor Steph Curry. I want you to feel that if you come and use our product, you’re part of something greater, right? You’re– You have this sense of community. You have the sense of I’m a part of a community of builders, of innovators, right? Of people who are making the best of AI. That also comes with the Treasure AI name, and that is something that I think we’re, gearing towards.
We’re not there yet. But that is where my focus is right now, to make sure that Treasure AI means something to the world, not just to us.
Mike: I love that. I love the idea of like a, y- a lifestyle brand i- in the world of B2B being actually part of something. I mean, can you explain a little bit more about how you’re doing that? Is that getting interaction between users? W- what are you doing? That’s a, that’s a really interesting thing to talk about
Rafa:Yeah. So it all starts in the little details, right? So I’ll tell you. Swag, the term swag, right? technology company gives out swag. They go to conferences, they give out a hat. They give out a custom boot nowadays. They do whatever they can to stand out. For us, it’s different, right?
When I said to the team and the company, “I want us to be thinking from a lifestyle brand day to day,” right? How can we fit their lives and not them fit their lives into our product? We changed our swag. actually have air Now, the air freshener scents are called AI, artificial intelligence. And our thing to the market is, hey, you can touch AI. You know what AI sounds like, what it looks like. can you smell it, right? That’s lifestyle. I know it sounds cheesy, but that is lifestyle, right? And the reason I bring that as an example is it’s, it’s all in the little details, right? If you focus on all the little details, you slowly but surely start to become more of a lifestyle brand.
People will see you differently, And, and ultimately, that’s the whole objective of when I build on the product side, right? I, I oversee the growth side. “I I also oversee the product. So left side, right side of the brain. But on the product side, we can build now to ensure that somebody works less, Forget 8:00 to 5:00. If somebody can work 8:00 to 1:00 because of our, tools underneath the hood, why not, right? We’ve done our jobs. And so if you have that methodology, plus you focus on the details on the growth engine side, you slowly but surely will become more of a lifestyle brand, right? People will care.
People will notice you. You will stand out. just a different way of doing business as a tech company
Mike: I love that. I, I, I think that’s a great approach to, you know, building a bit more of an emotional relationship with your customers. I’m gonna go and focus a little bit more though on the, product and, and how do you, you know, let that person that starts at 8:00 actually finish at 1:00 rather than work through to 5:00?
I mean, what problems are you solving for customers today that you maybe couldn’t solve two years ago?
Rafa:Yeah, I mean, l-let’s, let’s talk about just the, verticals we serve and, and ultimately the technology vertical we, sit in, right? Or historically have sat in. work very closely with financial services, healthcare, media, automotive, CPG, retail, right, hospitality entertainment, you name it, publishers. And one of the big components of that is historically been a customer data platform, right? So if you look at those verticals, you look at the vertical that we come in as a vendor, it’s often viewed as complex and, and hard to deploy, right? I’m trying to change that, and I can now because of AI and the products that we have.
We just came out with a new product called Treasure AI Studio. Treasure AI Studio is the super orchestrator at the top that allows you to orchestrate your activation suites plus the CDP, AKA the data foundation, all in plain English. You couldn’t have done that as a marketer six months ago, right? You just couldn’t. Fixing a broken data pipeline, how are you gonna do that without the technical chops? are you gonna do that and get prioritized by IT? You may have a two, three-week time span that you’re still gonna be waiting for them to fix that, that broken pipeline. you could do that now with Treasure AI Studio, right?
And so those are some of the use cases that we actually are able to solve for today via our products that we couldn’t offer to the market e-even a few months, past, how do you deploy a campaign from the ground up in five minutes? How can you be at the gym? I’ll tell you a personal story. We have Treasure AI Studio on, on web, desktop, and mobile. the beauty of it being on mobile is that I can, as a CPO and CJO at this company, I, I usually go to the gym at five in the morning every single day. That’s just… I can’t sleep. Sometimes four if, if they let me in, right? but I like to sit on the StairMaster, and I just open Treasure AI Studio, and I ask the questions that I need to know answers right before I start my day. “Hey, show me the latest pipeline growth numbers,” right? “Show me green space. Show me account health for the following three accounts because I have a call with them later today when I check my calendar.” I can get those answers. Those are some cool use cases, right? If you are a CMO, and you can actually, in a proactive way, go to your team and say, “Hey, here’s what I’m seeing. Here’s a little bit of direction. Go about your day,” it’s fantastic. You’re moving, again, at the speed of now, right? In real time. You, you look at the signals at the right time
Mike: I think that’s interesting. I, I mean, it’s kind of a reflection of the importance of first-party data now, and I think a few years ago, you know, third-party data was, was really the key thing. A lot of privacy regulations come in. My first question is, is first-party data really that valuable now?
Is that really where people need to focus?
Rafa:First-party data is a goldmine, right? I don’t think that has changed. I think the mindset has to change in terms of how you actually deploy the value of that goldmine. And here’s what I mean by that. I’ve sat in so many panels, webinars, fireside chats, you name it, you have all these big brands and CDOs talking about the value of first-party data the process they’re gonna go through and what their expectations are. And what I always tell them is, “This all sounds great,” right? It’s like writing a book. You wrote a beautiful book. But in execution, you’re gonna be sitting there for two, three years still looking to deploy your second or third use case, Because you’re gonna uncover the next broken pipeline, the next missing source.
You’re gonna uncover some potential regulation that changes or comes in. You’re never gonna actually deploy the, the true value of that data. so with AI coming into the mix, you can actually deploy much faster, right? And, and we have this saying at the company that AI is only as good as, as what you feed it, right?
Garbage in, garbage out. First-party data sits at the crux of that. to make sure that you leverage it with purpose. try to solve everything at once. Just solve what’s your most critical business problem, and then scale it, right? Add another source. Change a table. Check a different pipeline. try to do this pretty book and then try to actually go and have somebody read it. Guess what? They’re gonna be stuck on page one. They’re not gonna get past that, right? And you’re gonna churn. You’re gonna bring a new vendor, but you’re gonna have the same book. So then you’re gonna churn again, and it’s gonna keep, uh, it’s gonna be a continuous cycle.
So it’s not the vendor problem. It’s you are the problem
Mike: That’s really interesting because, you know, as an agency, I see a lot of people, with a lot of first-party data that frankly they’re not using or they’re using very badly. and it’s interesting that, you know, you’re saying it’s not the tool, it’s really about, making sure you can implement those use cases.
So do you think AI really is the key to making it easier to, make use of that data?
Rafa:Well, and no. I’ll tell you the no, and the no is not so much a no, more of a caveat. The, the challenge with, with first-party data is access, right? You cannot just give everyone the same degree of access. Privacy regulations, governance, it’s extremely, extremely critical now more than ever because people tend to want to have more access with AI. And so that’s the no part, right? You have to ensure with first-party data and using the data, you can’t just democratize data. You have to do it in a governed way, something that we take very seriously here because we serve global brands, right? And so we wanna make sure that we can remain compliant and keep, keep them true to it as well. However, the reality is people can actually ask deeper questions and get an answer right away, right? You can go today and ask a question in Trust your AI Studio, “Hey, why is this channel actually not sending more than X number of emails when my segment has the following set of profiles?” Well, it’s because you’re missing a source, or you are missing X signal, And then the more answers you get, the more likely you are to go and explore and use more of the data?
right? There’s a question of whether you should or have access, right? that’s just the reality. And so because you can get an answer, at the tip of your finger so much faster, you are more likely to be able to use more of that goldmine
Mike: that’s interesting. the opportunity for AI to actually help people make use of that data is, clearly a great opportunity. But do you think there’s areas where maybe companies are overestimating the benefit of using AI, particularly agentic AI?
Rafa:I- in many ways, right? And, and I’ll tell you the, the biggest mistake, and this is my opinion, this is not a Treasury Eye opinion, but this is me, Rafa Flores’ opinion. Everyone wants to just rush to deploy AI, right? You’re seeing that. There’s pressure all the way from boards down to C-level and, and it just trickles down. There’s two factors you’re gonna run against. Number one, there’s a credible fear of AI? in general. So if you’re in the board and your CEO says, “Yes, that sounds great. We’re gonna go And do X,” that person may not. They may be scared of even them losing their job. And it– and this fear just tenfold as you go down.
The amount of liv- mid-level management that’s scared and says, “Yes, boss, I’m gonna go and talk to this vendor,” and then they delay those conversations by a month, and then they push the meeting out, and then it’s six months later and they still haven’t engaged, is they’re doing that purposely because they don’t wanna risk losing their job.
And so there’s that fear element of it, right? And then on the other side, the mistake being made is everyone’s thinking about, how do we actually save costs? How do we work faster? I have not once, Mike, promoted anyone at any company or team that I’ve led due to how fast they work. Never. I have never sat in a, panel or a meeting where we’re discussing promotions and said, “Well, this person works faster, so they’re gonna get the promotion.” No. It’s all about adding value, right? And so when it comes to overestimating AI, overestimate the fact that still have to add value, right? It’s not about just saving costs or working faster. It’s you can work as fast as the speed of light, but if you’re not bright enough in the room, guess what? It’s not gonna be enough, right? And so I think that is kinda overestimated many times. how do you measure success of AI? It’s not just operational efficiency. It’s you ultimately have financial attainment
Mike: I mean, I think that that’s a really, like, straightforward, down-to-earth approach. You know, you’ve gotta get the value. But obviously, we’ve all seen great benefits from AI. So, on the other hand, let, let’s look at something more positive. Are there some examples of, you know, enterprise AI deployments or applications that you think are gonna happen over the next couple of years that are really gonna surprise people?
Rafa: I think digital worker, and I know it’s a hard pivot to go from, “Hey, we’re talking about fear of AI” to digital worker. Digital worker, I think the problem with the concept of it is when people hear the term digital worker in the sense of AI, automatically think we’re saying, “You are going to lose your job because an agent’s gonna take it away from you.” not what we mean right? worker, what we mean is, at least us at Treasure AI, “Hey, the job that you are performing when you go to sleep,” because you need to sleep. Human beings need to sleep. It’s a requirement. You eat, you sleep, and you drink water, right? There needs to be something in place that’s running autonomously, and that will allow you to have a better morning the next day and the next day and the next day.
And so you are going to see a big rise in the term of digital workers in the field in better supporting the human in the loop so that it’s a team effort, right? And we’re seeing that. We are seeing that quite a bit at Treasure AI. We have a lot of companies that we serve today saying, “Hey, let’s talk about digital worker. Let’s ensure we can leverage it,” right? How do we make sure we can bring it into the mix with teams while still them being the governance in place behind the machine? so I think you’re gonna see the rapid rise of that. unfortunately, I think some vendors and companies are gonna take advantage of it and, and just say, “Hey, by 2035, all of you are gonna be out of jobs.” I don’t think that’s gonna be the case, right? I don’t think banks want all of us to lose our jobs ’cause no agent’s gonna pay our mortgages. it’s us getting a paycheck. but I, I do, see a big rise in the, the concept of digital workers
Mike: that’s interesting. I think what we’re seeing in the market is there’s really this question of how big an impact there’s gonna be. And, you know, you’ve said digital workers are gonna be a big thing, but you don’t see them replacing all our jobs. I mean, a- as a SaaS company, you, you’ve obviously seen some of the valuations of SaaS go up and down, and particularly down recently as there’s this, idea that maybe vibe coding is gonna replace SaaS.
So do you think SaaS has still got a future? and if you were starting again, you know, would you start, you know, helping people build something custom, or would you build a SaaS product?
Rafa: I would not build a SaaS product. I’ll just tell you that out of the gates, right? And the reason I wouldn’t build a SaaS product is there, there’s no such a thing anymore as an ankle biter. your competitors, big or small, they can catch up to you very quickly, I think here’s what makes the difference. What makes the difference is how do you actually guardrail AI to ensure that you could still serve a purpose and suffice to a, a business need in a safe manner, right? Because sometimes you can run into some serious risk. I’ll give you a great example. In the worlds of CDPs, the segments are the engine to everything, right?
It tells you who the right people are with the right signal and how to best target them. if something happens to that segment because you have vibe coded in, right? You have vibe coded an application, you put people in there, and suddenly the guardrails you have on there, you then think that somebody could potentially go and a bad actor come in and pull that information away. Well, guess what? You may suddenly just have to shut down your operation because you’re gonna get a major lawsuit, right? And you’re gonna lose that lawsuit. You never thought of it, but you will, right? And so guardrails are extremely important, and I think that’s the big difference, right? You could be a SaaS company looking to evolve to being an AI-first company. that will win are the ones that have proper guardrails. And you’re seeing that with some of the big names out in the market. But you’re also seeing how some of those companies still struggle, We just saw the big Anthropic news with the US government. Now, take it or leave it, you could see that in many different shapes or form, but it, it, it happened, right?
And so do you guardrail to prevent some of that? It doesn’t matter who you are, that will come your way
Mike: I think that’s a great point. And I mean, I guess you’re saying that even when you look at, you know, a CDP platform, which doesn’t seem to be necessarily something that has to be super robust and reliable, actually that really matters, because when it goes wrong the cost is high
Rafa: Exactly. Right? And, and I think this is a… Going back to your first question of was it the right decision to come back, there was a major announcement last week from Databricks, right? They’ve been a partner of ours, data warehouse. Obviously, a lot of our customers have Databricks on the technical side, and they use us as their martech source of truth. But now Databricks is saying, “Hey, we have customer data lake. We’re the next CDP,” right? Sitting within the data warehouse. What they’re realizing, at least from my perspective, is it’s not that easy to build a CDP because now you’re building something for a non-technical user that you have no experience with, right?
And you have to now gain credibility there. And you also forget about that there’s historical friction between the marketeer or the CMO and the IT teams, and now you’re forcing them to kind of be in one place. It’s just different, right? And so, everyone wants to be a CDP. I have this running joke with some of my executive friends that everyone wants to be a CDP.
Nobody knows what it’s like to actually have to build a CDP, because when something goes wrong, it could go really wrong. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, that could really affect many, many different things down underneath the hood
Mike: That’s such a great point. I mean, I’d like to kind of finish this discussion on, on data and, and CDPs with something a bit positive. So I’m interested to know, have you got an example of a particularly innovative or creative or effective campaign that you’ve seen that, leverages technology and data?
Rafa: From us or just in general in markets?
Mike: just wherever, where something you think is great
Rafa: Well, I’ll, I’ll tell you, and this… I don’t think I’m great by any means, but I am gonna give my teams a shout-out here. One of the things that I I decided to deploy a couple months ago, it just came to my mind. I said, “Well, what if you could actually go and try a CDP as soon as you land on the website,” right?
The concept of PLG. Hard to do. It’s not easy to do it. There’s a reason nobody had done it before. But I believe that nowadays when you go and you think of a campaign, people wanna… They wanna test it right there and then, “Don’t just send me an email. Don’t just show me a, a demo on render. I actually wanna see it.
Give it to me. I wanna try it. If it works, I may buy it. If it’s, if it doesn’t, then maybe not.” And if it doesn’t exist, then I’ll know right away if you… If, if I ask you, “Hey, I wanna try it right now,” and they say, “No,” I know that it doesn’t exist. And so we decided to roll out PLG on our website. If you go to treasure.ai, you can actually do it now.
You can actually go, click Try Now, and it takes you to your own CDP deployment, You can bring in your own data. It’s governed, it’s safe. Or you can actually use some sample data that we have, depending on the vertical and the persona you are. And you can go and, and run and, and get an email with the latest information you need or how to deploy your next best journey, right, for omni-channel orchestration. To me, those risks bets worth taking at this point in time the expectation of who a buyer is and what they’re looking for
Mike: I love that. And I, and I think that that’s different to what a lot of people say on the podcast. and it’s great that you’re not only calling out one of your own products or, or your own campaigns, but you’re also talking about something that’s really about building an experience for a customer. So thank you for that
Rafa: it’s always fun to build the next best campaign. You gotta be different nowadays if you wanna stand out
Mike: this has been fascinating, Rafa. I mean, before I let you go, there’s a couple of questions that we like to ask everybody. and the first one’s really simple. What’s the best marketing advice that someone’s given to you?
Rafa: It just happened. I was at Cannes at the Festival of Creativity, and I was having a conversation with a friend, and we were walking this person through a, a new product offering regarding paid media AI suite, right? How do you actually optimize this big dollar spend that you have for all your ad requirements? And this person said, “We are at an era where performance marketing and brand marketing are just becoming one. not really separate. They need to become one. However, the concept of brand marketing versus performance marketing still stands where marketing is there to build a brand that people love, you are there to drive conversions to secure targets as a business,” right? I thought that was just such good advice ’cause oftentimes we try to separate the two, and we report separately on them, and we speak of them. But you cannot build a brand you love without knowing what you need to actually secure in the background, and vice versa. How are you gonna secure targets if you don’t build a brand you love?
and how do you bridge those two together even have a dashboard that shows you our lovability score, but also our pipeline, right? those don’t really exist. You don’t really think of it that way. well, I-I’m changing my mindset, I tell you that, after that conversation, and now I wanna have a dashboard that shows me that, right?
Tell me, do people love our brand, and are we actually gonna be able to hit quota? me in one single view
Mike: I think that’s a, that’s a really fascinating idea there. And, um, you know, obviously the more people love the brand, the easier it is to get performance marketing to actually deliver results. So I think that’s brilliant. the other question we like to ask people is around the future, and I mean, at Treasure AI, you’re, you’re right on that bleeding edge of, this rapid change we’re seeing in marketing.
if you were talking to a young person who maybe just graduated from college, was looking to start a marketing career, what piece of advice would you give them?
Rafa: Yeah. And, and we’re seeing this, right? I mean, always go on stage and I say, “Hey, don’t fear AI.” And then I will get an answer from, from the audience of, “Well, how can I not when kid cannot get a job fresh out of college?” And it’s a reality. I’m a parent of four, right? I, I completely want my kids to, to be able to be employed when they finish, but I do want them to go to college. But what I will tell a young marketer who is just graduating, looking for their first job, go and actually use AI. Go learn all about it. Go speak, reach out on LinkedIn to all the AI experts, reach out to yourself, myself, whoever, right? to get advice so that you can actually develop your own perspective of how AI can be applicable to the jobs that you want to apply for, so that when you go through that interview process, you come to the table with something. Don’t let companies put everything at the table and ask you, “Hey, what do you think? How can you actually add value to us?” tell the company, “Here’s how I can add value, because here’s the three or four different key use cases that I see of how AI can be applicable to me at this point in time with the limited context that I have.” That would be my advice to them.
Mike: I think that’s brilliant. Bring something to the table is probably, you know, one of the best bits of advice I think you can give a young person.
this has been fascinating. I feel like we could have spent a lot longer talking about AI, and Treasure Data but if somebody wants to find out more information, where’s the best place for them to go?
Rafa: Try the product. The best way is to try the product. So going back to the PLG concept on web, treasure.ai, go in there, you’ll see a big button right in the center of the screen saying, “Hey, move at the speed of now. Do you wanna try now?” Try now, right? And if something’s broken, you don’t like the UI, something’s missing, me on LinkedIn, let’s have a conversation.
feedback is good feedback
Mike: That’s amazing that the head of product’s being, you know, giving you an offer to actually give product feedback directly. I love that. Thank you, Rafa.
Rafa: No, thank you for having me. What a pleasure
Mike: Thanks so much. I’ve really enjoyed this. Thanks for being a guest on Marketing B2B Technology.
Rafa: Thank you. Happy to come back anytime
Mike: Thank you
